76 Facts About William Penn

William Penn then journeyed further north up the Delaware River and founded Philadelphia on the river's western bank.

William Penn was imprisoned several times in the Tower of London due to his faith, and his book No Cross, No Crown, published in 1669, which he authored from jail, has become a classic of Christian theological literature.

Admiral William Penn served in the Commonwealth Navy during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and was rewarded by Oliver Cromwell with estates in Ireland.

The lands given to William Penn had been confiscated from Irish Confederates who had participated in the Irish Rebellion of 1641.

Admiral William Penn took part in the restoration of King Charles II and was eventually knighted and served in the Royal Navy.

At the time of his son's birth, then-Captain William Penn was twenty-three and an ambitious naval officer in charge of blockading ports held by Confederate forces.

William Penn grew up during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, who succeeded in leading a Puritan rebellion against King Charles I; the king was beheaded when William Penn was four years old.

William Penn's smallpox prompted his parents to move from the suburbs to an estate in Essex.

The country life made a lasting impression on young William Penn, and kindled in him a love of horticulture.

The middle class aligned itself with the Royalists and Admiral William Penn was sent on a secret mission to bring back exiled Prince Charles.

William Penn was first educated at Chigwell School, then by private tutors in Ireland, and later at Christ Church at the University of Oxford in Oxford.

William Penn later opposed Anglicanism on religious grounds, but he absorbed many Puritan behaviors, and was known later for his own serious demeanor, strict behavior, and lack of humor.

In 1660, William Penn arrived at the University of Oxford, where he was enrolled as a gentleman scholar with an assigned servant.

William Penn found that he was not sympathetic with either his father's martial view of the world or his mother's society-oriented sensibilities.

William Penn returned home for the extraordinary splendor of the King's restoration ceremony and was a guest of honor alongside his father, who received a highly unusual royal salute for his services to The Crown.

William Penn's father had great hopes for his son's career under the favour of the King.

Back at Oxford, William Penn considered a medical career and took some dissecting classes.

William Penn learned the valuable skills of forming ideas into theory, discussing theory through reasoned debate, and testing the theories in the real world.

However, William Penn stood by the dean, thereby gaining a fine and reprimand from the university.

William Penn's mother made peace in the family, which allowed her son to return home but she quickly concluded that both her social standing and her husband's career were being threatened by their son's behavior.

In Paris at the court of young Louis XIV, William Penn found French manners far more refined than the coarse manners of his countrymen, but he did not like the extravagant display of wealth and privilege he saw in the French.

William Penn had developed a taste for fine clothes, and for the rest of his life would pay somewhat more attention to his dress than most Quakers.

William Penn had young Penn enroll in law school but soon his studies were interrupted.

William Penn functioned as an emissary between his father and the King, then returned to his law studies.

Young William Penn reflected on the suffering and the deaths, and the way humans reacted to the epidemic.

Rather than state that he was not a Quaker and thereby avoid any charges, he publicly declared himself a member and finally joined the Quakers at the age of 22 In pleading his case, William Penn stated that since the Quakers had no political agenda they should not be subject to laws that restricted political action by minority religions and other groups.

William Penn found all these tenets to sit well with his conscience and his heart.

William Penn became a close friend of George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, whose movement started in the 1650s during the tumult of the Cromwellian revolution.

William Penn wrote a comprehensive, detailed explanation of Quakerism along with a testimony to the character of George Fox, in his introduction to the autobiographical Journal of George Fox.

In effect, William Penn became the first theologian, theorist, and legal defender of Quakerism, providing its written doctrine and helping to establish its public standing.

In 1669, William Penn traveled to Ireland to deal with his father's estates.

William Penn became a great friend of William Morris, a leading Quaker figure in Cork, and often stayed with Morris at Castle Salem near Rosscarbery.

In 1668, William Penn published the first of many pamphlets, Truth Exalted: To Princes, Priests, and People.

William Penn was a critic of all religious groups, except Quakers, which he saw as the only true Christian group at that time in England.

William Penn lambasted all "false prophets, tithemongers, and opposers of perfection".

In 1668, after writing a follow-up tract, The Sandy Foundation Shaken, William Penn was imprisoned in the Tower of London.

The Bishop of London ordered that William Penn be held indefinitely until he publicly recanted his written statements.

William Penn said the rumour had been "maliciously insinuated" by detractors who wanted to create a bad reputation to Quakers.

William Penn later said that what he really denied were the Catholic interpretations of this theological topic, and the use of unbiblical concepts to explain it.

William Penn expressly confessed he believed in the Holy Three and the divinity of Christ.

William Penn petitioned for an audience with the King, which was denied but which led to negotiations on his behalf by one of the royal chaplains.

William Penn demonstrated no remorse for his aggressive stance and vowed to keep fighting against the wrongs of the Church and the King.

William Penn was accused of preaching before a gathering in the street, which William Penn deliberately provoked to test the validity of the 1664 Conventicle Act, just renewed in 1670, which denied the right of assembly to "more than five persons in addition to members of the family, for any religious purpose not according to the rules of the Church of England".

William Penn was assisted by his solicitor, Thomas Rudyard, an eminent London Quaker lawyer, and pleaded for his right to see a copy of the charges laid against him and the laws he had supposedly broken, but the Recorder of London, Sir John Howel, on the bench as chief judge, refused, although this was a right guaranteed by law.

The Duke and the King, in return for the Admiral's lifetime of service to the Crown, promised to protect young William Penn and make him a royal counselor.

William Penn inherited a large fortune, but found himself in jail again for six months.

William Penn remained close to home but continued writing his tracts, espousing religious tolerance and railing against discriminatory laws.

In 1677, a group of prominent Quakers that included William Penn purchased the colonial province of West Jersey, comprising the western half of present-day New Jersey.

William Penn became the sole proprietor of a huge tract of land west of New Jersey and north of the Province of Maryland belonging to Lord Baltimore, and gained sovereign rule of the territory with all rights and privileges with the exception of the power to declare war.

William Penn drafted a charter of liberties for the settlement creating a political utopia guaranteeing free and fair trial by jury, freedom of religion, freedom from unjust imprisonment and free elections.

William Penn then began establishing the legal framework for an ethical society where power was derived from the people, from "open discourse", in much the same way as a Quaker Meeting was run.

Notably, as the sovereign, William Penn thought it important to limit his own power as well.

William Penn hoped that an amendable constitution would accommodate dissent and new ideas and allow meaningful societal change without resorting to violent uprisings or revolution.

In 1684, William Penn returned to England to see his family and to try to resolve a territorial dispute with Lord Baltimore.

William Penn did not always pay attention to details and had not taken the fairly simple step of determining where the 40th degree of latitude actually was.

William Penn supported James' Declaration of Indulgence, which granted toleration to Quakers, and went on a "preaching tour through England to promote the King's Indulgence".

William Penn offered some assistance to James II's campaign to regulate the parliamentary constituencies by sending a letter to a friend in Huntingdon asking him to identify men who could be trusted to support the king's campaign for liberty of conscience.

William Penn faced serious problems in the colonies due to his sloppy business practices.

William Penn received a hearty welcome upon his arrival and found his province much changed in the intervening 18 years.

The tolerant William Penn transformed himself almost into a Puritan, in an attempt to control the fractiousness that had developed in his absence, tightening up some laws.

William Penn was commuting to Philadelphia on a six-man barge, which he admitted he prized above "all dead things".

William Penn had plenty of time to spend with his family and still attend to affairs of state, though delegations and official visitors were frequent.

William Penn's wife did not enjoy life as a governor's wife and hostess and preferred the simple life she led in England.

William Penn returned to England and immediately became embroiled in financial and family troubles.

Penn had hoped to have William succeed him in America.

William Penn had made many generous loans which he failed to press.

Some of William Penn's agents hired lawyer Andrew Hamilton to represent the Penn family in this replevin case.

In 1718, at age 73, William Penn died penniless, at his home in Ruscombe, near Twyford in Berkshire, and is buried in a grave next to his first wife, Gulielma, in the cemetery of the Jordans Quaker meeting house near Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire.

William Penn married Hannah when she was 25 and he was 52.

William Penn was extravagant, a bad manager and businessman, and not very astute in judging people and making appointments.

William Penn was gregarious, had many friends, and was good at developing the useful connections which protected him through many crises.

William Penn's "Frame of Government" and his other ideas were later studied by Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, whose father was a Quaker.

William Penn was a bitter opponent of Benjamin Franklin, and Franklin's push for greater democracy in the years leading up to the American Revolution.

William Penn developed a proposal for a United States of Europe through the creation of a European Assembly made of deputies who could discuss and adjudicate controversies peacefully.

William Penn is considered the first intellectual to suggest the creation of a European Parliament and what became the present-day European Union in the late 20th century.

William Penn was seen by later Quakers as a theologian in his own right, on the same level as founder George Fox and apologist Isaac Penington.